Sacred Disorder | Cliff Bostock's blog – 'Finally, I came to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind' (Rimbaud)
My mother’s death, a mysterious painting, a call to create
Saturday was the eighth anniversary of my mother’s death on June 28, 2006. Much about my mother remains mysterious to me, and this painting is an example. I grew up seeing it in the attic of every home we owned. Finally, maybe 30 years ago , I stole it. A day later, mama called and […]
Broken-hearted, lost in a labyrinth, encountering angels
PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE begins in the imagination. That’s one reason I have a sign in my office, dangling from the mantel, that asks clients if they have a dream to share or if something unusual happened since their last session. The latter — odd, sometimes surreal experiences — often communicate at great depth what is going […]
Thanks for the mail
I’ve just been through the nightmare of “migrating” my website and a few posts here disappeared. This was the latest. Sorry for the repetition it causes on Twitter and Facebook. Hey, y’all. I have received a ton of mail, especially on Facebook, about Creative Loafing’s cutback of my “Grazing” column. I haven’t been able to […]
Holiday pain, a crying cat, a broken heart
“Habentibus symbolum facile est transitus.” (“To those who have a symbol, the transition is easy.”) The day after Thanksgiving, I stopped at a service station on Hill Street in Grant Park. Between this station and I-20 is some wooded land in which homeless people live. It is also home to many feral cats. As I […]
Dream of an authentic Indian ‘pig in a blanket’
Occupationally, I have two lives. In one, I’m a writer and in the other I’m a PhD in psychology who tries to help clients expand the capacity of the imagination (work that I like to distinguish from psychotherapy). In the last year or so, the only writing I’ve done has been my longtime dining column […]
Another birthday
Tuesday, June 16, is my birthday. It’s also Bloomsday, Dublin’s annual celebration of writer James Joyce and his world-changing novel, Ulysses, published in 1922. Bloomsday is named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, which describes a single day in his life, June 16, 1904. I’ve always enjoyed the coincidence of being born on the […]
A documentary-maker contacts me about disinheritance
I received an interesting email last week from a researcher for a documentary TV series about wills and inheritance. She read my “Headcase” columns about my father’s disinheritance of me and wants to interview me for the series. My father died in Novermber of 2007 and turned out to have written me out of his […]
Tires: an emblem of self esteem and regard for your family
I’ve never cared anything about cars, with the exception of the vintage MGBs I’ve driven now and then. I’d happily live in a city where I didn’t have to own one. My disregard for the appearance of my ride, a ridiculously gas-hungry Jeep Grand Cherokee, is shocking to friends who treat their expensive vehicles like […]
Father’s Day reverie
Every Father’s Day until this one, I’ve spent most of the day agonizing over the same dilemma: Should I insult my father by not calling or should I call and make myself subject to his anger and disapproval. Over the years, I’d say it went about 50/50. A complicating factor was always that my birthday […]
It’s my birthday
Somehow, this song by MGMT seems appropriate. It’s too late to die young. more about “It’s my birthday“, posted with vodpod